God does not force anyone to believe in him

Elaine Storkey unpacks scripture to show that God gives each of us the freedom of choice, with an exhortation to stand with those who are persecuted for putting their faith in him.

A young woman asked to speak to me privately at a lecture I gave on gender violence, from my book Scars Across Humanity (SPCK). She wanted me to highlight ‘religious honour killings’. A Christian convert, she had run away from her family six years ago when, at the age of 15, her father told her they were all going back to Pakistan for a family wedding. She discovered, with shock, that it was her own wedding – her family was planning to force her to marry a man from their religion whom she’d never met. Hiding her panic, she went with a pretext about ‘homework’ to her Christian schoolfriend, whose mother immediately packed bags and drove her to safe accommodation in another town. She took a new identity and in the intervening years has lived in peace, trained as a pharmacist and been enveloped by Christian love and care. But she believes that if her family ever found her, they would kill her.